Agencies
Mumbai, May 15: The Air Passengers' Association of India (APAI) has asked airlines to make public the algorithms they use to arrive at prices of air tickets.
D. Sudhakara Reddy, the president of the passengers' body, also demanded that the Competition Commission of India (CCI), which is seeking expert opinion on understanding this algorithm, look at unfair practices by airport operators.
Mr. Reddy said that the Commission had pointed out that there were instances of sharp fluctuations in airfares during peak demand.
"Use of algorithms in relation to air ticket pricing throws open many issues. If it is a set of commands to computers, airlines should reveal to passengers what those commands are," Mr. Reddy said.
According to the CCI, they have confronted the airlines with these posers and did not get satisfactory responses. The CCI said it was now talking to experts to find out more details and to unravel the mystery of airlines increasing the fares uniformly, an act that could attract the penal provisions of the cartelisation.
The APAI said it had been pointing out these anomalies in fare fixation. |
